[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 5 (Tuesday, January 25, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S375-S376]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ

  Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. President, historians Will and Ariel Durant have 
told us, ``The present is the past rolled up for action and the past is 
the present unrolled for understanding.'' In our search for 
understanding and guidance for our actions, we are pausing today to 
commemorate one of the darkest moments of modern history, the Nazi 
Holocaust, the effort by the Nazi regime to exterminate the Jewish 
people. Six million Jews were sent to their death before the end of the 
death camps. Sixty years ago today, the Auschwitz death camp was 
liberated, bringing an end to the slaughter of well over 1 million 
people at that location alone. As unfathomable as that reality is, we 
need to seek to understand it in order to prevent it. I am not sure if 
we can ever truly understand it.
  In some ways it is kind of bizarre, but we need to understand that 
while genocide in Germany, Cambodia, Rwanda, and elsewhere may end up 
as a kind of mass insanity in some almost bizarre way, it begins in a 
terribly misplaced idealism.
  The Khmer Rouge thought that returning Cambodia to its rural 
beginnings was the way to create a good society. They became so 
convinced that modernity was destroying their people that they 
attempted to forcibly empty the cities and kill anyone with a 
professional degree or anyone who even wore glasses. They even kept 
careful records of those they killed because they assumed history would 
honor them for their actions. The Germans kept records, too. It is 
difficult for me to fathom they would believe that history would honor 
them for their actions.
  The situation in Rwanda dates back to the colonial period, when 
European colonial powers favored Tutsis over Hutus. When independence 
was hastily granted and the Europeans departed, a seesaw of vengeance 
and reprisals began, which escalated unchecked for 30 years. When 
historic anger boiled over, with the failure of the international 
community to step in, a terrible period of violence claimed over half a 
million people.
  The fact that genocide could happen in an industrialized, cultured 
nation that had produced Beethoven and Goethe is especially chilling. 
As we read the various accounts of what was happening in the Third 
Reich, it astounds us that people could come to such conclusions. It 
astounds us that so many good people could do nothing, did nothing. 
While millions were slaughtered, they turned their backs and shut their 
eyes.
  Auschwitz was not conceived as a death camp. It was part of Hitler's 
and Albert Speer's master plans for bold new Nazi ``Cities of the 
East'' that would express their vision for society. Such projects 
required slave labor for which Jews and others were likely candidates. 
The rise of democratic socialism in Germany was in part a reaction to 
their hatred of communism in the Soviet Union. So they had a strategy 
to empty the lands of Poland and Russia for resettlement by an expanded 
Germany. Such was their grandiosity that human beings became objects to 
be used for their plans and obstacles to be destroyed. They dehumanized 
the Jewish people.
  The lessons of these three examples is: Hatred combined with any 
number of other circumstances can explode into genocide. Even as the 
situations in Darfur and elsewhere continue, we would be naive and 
foolish to believe that mankind has ``learned its lesson.''

[[Page S376]]

First, we need to go on the moral offensive whenever hatred arises. 
That is why I have risen on the floor several times to decry the growth 
of antisemitism in Europe. Even on American college campuses, 
antisemitism is raising its ugly head today. We need to speak out. We 
need to put a cork in the bottle. We need to make sure it does not 
spread.
  Second, I think we need to understand that with American power comes 
responsibility. In concert with our allies in the U.N., we must be 
prepared to intervene when we can to prevent bad situations from going 
over the abyss into genocide. Diplomacy is by its nature slow and 
cautious while situations such as these are fast moving and can 
degenerate overnight. We need to find ways to respond quickly. The 
history of the quick action of the British in 1941 to stop the Farhud, 
a genocidal program against Iraqi Jews, is an event deserving more 
attention and more study.
  There is one other reason for us to focus on these monstrously evil 
events. They provide stirring examples of the nobility and resiliency 
of human beings as well: The story of ``Schindler's List'', the 
compassionate soldiers who liberated the concentration camps. Soviet 
troops liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, and were able to save 
about 7,000 prisoners from certain death. The stories of surviving 
prisoners themselves are remarkable. Those who managed to maintain 
their humanity in the most inhumane of circumstances inspired us all.
  Victor Frankl offered this recollection:

       We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men 
     who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away 
     their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, 
     but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken 
     from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to 
     choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to 
     choose one's own way.

  Frankl also wrote:

       A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I 
     saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, 
     proclaimed as the final truth by so many thinkers. The truth 
     that love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can 
     aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret 
     that human poetry and human thought and belief have to 
     impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

  The Holocaust and similar events discourage us with the realization 
of the extent of evil of which people are capable, and we must guard 
against it vigilantly. But they also display the highest and best human 
beings can rise to, which gives us courage and hope.
  We will never, ever forget man's inhumanity to man in the Holocaust. 
We reflect on the liberation of Auschwitz, so we assure that we never 
forget. But at the same time we have a sense of courage and hope that 
in the worst of circumstances man can still turn to love and to faith 
and to salvation.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, how much time do we have on our side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 11 minutes 50 seconds remaining.

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